This course provides an overview of Thomas Jefferson's work and perspectives presented by the University of Virginia in partnership with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Together, UVA and Monticello are recognized internationally as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

BJ

Great Course! Not being from here, this course helped me understand some fundamental differences between Canadian and American history; and the obvious differences in our cultures today.

MC

Mar 11, 2017

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Really insightful course giving a really amazing insight to the past political climate of the US, but also really shedding light on the current climate as well.

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Thomas Jefferson, American Icon

Thomas Jefferson is an American icon. He has also been one of the most polarizing and controversial figures in American history. In this introductory module, we’ll explore how Jefferson’s reputation has changed and evolved over the last two centuries. We’ll discover what Jefferson considered to be his most important contribution to the “Age of Enlightenment” in which he was living. We’ll discuss why some people in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have viewed Jefferson and his ideas with skepticism or worse while others have embraced Jefferson. Overall, learning about how people from many different backgrounds and perspectives have interpreted Jefferson throughout history will help us understand why it’s so important to think critically and honestly about Jefferson’s life and legacy today.

Enseigné par

Professor Peter S. Onuf

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor, Emeritus

Transcription

Welcome to the world of Thomas Jefferson. Here we are in the rotunda of Mr. Jefferson's university, The University of Virginia, and over the next few weeks, when we're be talking about Jefferson's world. And we want to begin right here in the rotunda. As a place. Like Monticello, his home. Some five miles away. On top of a hill. A place where we can get to know Jefferson a little bit. But why should we want to know about Jefferson and his world? Let's start by talking about how people have thought about Jefferson here in America, and around the world, in the two centuries and more since he penned the Declaration of Independence. The one thing. Most Americans and many people in the world know about Jefferson is he, he is the author of the Declaration of Independence. Now, of course, the Declaration of Independence, the creation of a new American nation was an important event in world history. And keep this in mind, it's Jefferson's understanding of history that's crucial to our understanding of Jefferson. Jefferson sees the revolution in the context of the progress of mankind. Jefferson is a child of the enlightenment, a great period in western history. In which it suddenly seemed possible to understand things, to unlock nature's secrets. To predict, project, and shape the future of the world. The enlightenment had proceeded on several fronts, the scientific enlightenment, the philosophical enlightenment. New ways of knowing, and learning, and understanding. But the one thing that remained immune to enlightenment influences according to people like Thomas Jefferson was government. The fundamental issue of how people would organize and govern themselves. For Jefferson, everything changed on July 4th, 1776. It was going to be a new world. And, of course, when Jefferson and his fellow patriots imagine a new world, they are simultaneously imagining an old world against which they compare. Their experiment as they called it. Think of that word experiment. An experiment in republican government. The new science of mayhem. Applied to the quotidian daily affairs of ordinary men and women. This was going to be a revolution in political science and practice Applying enlightenment principles about human nature and human possibility and potential to the business of government. All men are created unequal. That would've been the common sense. Of most people on the eve of the American revolution. After all, you can't have a society if you don't have an order. Order implies hierarchy. Think of this vertical axis from top to bottom. Think of me as the head and you as the body. I am king for a day and you were my subjects, how else could the body be held together if all the arms and legs and fingers and toes and organs. I won't go into a full [LAUGH] anatomy course here. If they weren't bound together by some common principle. And if they weren't guided by the intelligence of the great brain, so submit to me I'm the great brain today, [LAUGH] and you are my subjects. All men are created unequal. Well, of course, you know that I am paraphrasing and turning its on head, the famous phrase from Jefferson's all men are created equal. That, for Jefferson, was a self-evident statement of a principle that had to be true. It was foundational. It's a principle that everybody would recognize once they opened their eyes. And think of that idea of opening your eyes, of being enlightened and suddenly seeing things that had never been clear before. This is Jefferson's belief in democracy. You may have lived under monarchy. You may have lived under a totalitarian regime. He wouldn't have said that. You might have lived under an aristocratic regime, and you might have imbibed and taken on the prejudices and biases. You might have thought you were unworthy to stand on the same level with those who rode by on high horses and looked down on you condescendingly. But think about it for a minute. Are they different from you in any fundamental sense? Is it just the accident of birth that gives some the right to rule? And that leaves you to do the heavy work? To produce the wealth? To put food on the table? To make the things that make life possible for everybody? Including those pampered aristocrats, who do no work. Now I don't want to start a revolution here right now. I don't want you to rise up and throw me down and spontaneously lecture to yourselves. [LAUGH] But I do want to make clear this fundamental principle. And that is Jefferson's belief that this intuitive, self-conscious understanding of who you are, and how you relate to other people, this, for him, changes everything. Now, this is a view of Jefferson, Jefferson as a visionary looking into the future. That we love here at the University of Virginia. Because we think that there's a connection then between this Jefferson who announces these principles, and what has happened throughout the world. Go back to the collapse of the so-called Evil Empire in 1989. It seemed to be a moment in which the Jeffersonian promise had been fulfilled and redeemed. That yes indeed, everybody everywhere recognizes this idea, that for a government to be legitimate it has to come from the people. It has to be their government. This you can see is an inspiring story. It connects Jefferson here in Virginia in Albo Morrow county. In his home on his mountaintop. It connects Jefferson, Jefferson with the large world. And it's an inspiring story. And it's why Jefferson has been honored over the generations by Americans. Because of that vision. Even people who would quarrel with Jefferson about just about everything else. why to think that there's is something well, exceptional about the United States. And here's the paradox. The exceptionalism of the United States that we associate with that. Visionary progressive Jefferson. That exceptionalism points toward the future of the world as the whole. It's an exceptionalism that ultimately gives way to universalism. Because if we can do it here, my fellow Americans, if our experiment can succeed, then why can't it succeed among all the peoples of the world? Well, that's a rhetorical question. And it's a question that actually is very difficult to answer. And we'll talk more about this as I come back to the theme of exceptionalism at the end. [MUSIC]